


torn apart by a wolf in a mask

by RowboatCop



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: At least there's a happy ending, Badass Skye, Child Abuse, Coulson shows up at the end to help her out, F/M, Grant Ward is a horror movie villain, Kidnapping, Mental Coercion, No seriously 'Nothing Personal' is a mini horror movie, Non-Graphic Rape/Non-Con, Other, Sexual Coercion, Skye Foster Family Feels, Skye did NOT go "Willingly", Skye is the hero, Skye's idealism and activism are born out of her experiences of opression, Supportive Coulson, Ward is a Nazi, skoulsonfest2k14
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-30
Updated: 2014-08-30
Packaged: 2018-02-11 00:53:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,613
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2046873
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RowboatCop/pseuds/RowboatCop
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Skye POV drawing parallels between three scenes: 1) foster home abuse in 2002, 2) with Ward on the Bus at the end of 'Only Light in the Darkness,' and 3) with Coulson at the end of 'Nothing Personal.' Canon with my fic 'just be glad you'll smile again,' in that the last scene is set after chapter 20 of that story. (Thus happy ending.) </p><p>I think that there are valid canonical reasons to believe that Skye experienced physical/sexual abuse, and one of them is the way she pulls herself together in 'The Only Light in the Darkness,' and keeps it together in 'Nothing Personal,' through some of the most disgusting, stomach-churning kisses I think I've ever seen on television.</p><p>Skoulsonfest2k14 Day 6: "St. Agnes." Because when I think St. Agnes, I think just generally about Skye's awful past?</p>
            </blockquote>





	torn apart by a wolf in a mask

**Author's Note:**

> I'm unsure about posting this because it's awful and I'm really more of a fluff person, except that the stupid horrible first scene got in my brain and wouldn't get out.

The Wilsons are nice people, good people. She feels lucky to be with them.

(But then she’s felt lucky to be with lots of the families that have taken her in.)

It’s been four months of family trips, family meetings, family meals — of Mrs. Wilson making pancakes and waffles and omelettes every morning, pot roast and pork chops and meatloaf every night. Mary Sue is better fed, better rested, and doing better in school than ever.

The four month mark is important because it’s the longest she’s ever been away from St. Agnes before, and her place with the Wilsons starts to feel permanent. She’s been with them for an entire summer and the first four weeks of school, and she’s _almost_ starting to trust that this is the way things will always be.

But then it happens.

(Of course, she will learn twelve years later that she would have been moved away from them soon regardless, that it was never actually going to be permanent, but that doesn’t change the fact that it happens.)

“Hi Mary Sue,” Mr. Wilson greets her when she gets home from school on Friday — it’s September 13, 2002.

(It's Friday the 13th and she will never be a superstitious person, but she will always hate Friday the 13th.)

“Hi Mr. Wilson. Where’s Mrs. Wilson?” Usually her foster mother would be finishing her piano lessons for the day, and she would ask Mary Sue to help her fix dinner. It’s become a favored part of her daily routine, learning how to cook.

“She’s visiting her sister, remember?”

Mary Sue nods then, squirming in discomfort at the change in routine, but smiling up at Mr. Wilson anyways. Even though he's fit and has a full head of hair, he seems terribly old to her, will always seem terribly old in her memories.

(She’ll realize later that he couldn't have been 40 — at least ten years younger than the Coulson she meets, though Mr. Wilson probably never looked as good.)

“Do you want to order a pizza for dinner?” He smiles down at her, and Mary Sue becomes aware for the first time of the joys of weekends with dads.

“Can we get Hawaiian?” She starts to get excited because she _loves_ pizza, though she hasn’t missed it much among the home-cooked meals, several orders of magnitude better than anything St. Agnes has ever served.

“You know it!”

She and Mr. Wilson had bonded over pineapple on their pizza the day they picked her up from St. Agnes, when the three stopped for lunch on the drive home. Mrs. Wilson had made silly faces and eaten pizza with lots of vegetables on it, and it was a good memory.

He goes to place the order, but calls back:

“Be a good girl and tidy up the coffee table, okay? Then pick a movie we can watch while we eat.”

“We’re going to eat in the living room? Won’t Mrs. Wilson be mad?”

He laughs at that.

“We’re not going to tell Mrs. Wilson, okay?”

She likes the feeling of having this secret with him, something small and fun, and she giggles as she goes to set up _Harry Potter_.

(The movie came out the previous year, but she hadn’t seen it until the Wilsons bought the DVD for her. Mary Sue, along with every other child at St. Agnes, has been secretly reading the books because the story of an orphan who finds his place...well.)

They watch the movie and eat their pizza, and altogether, she thinks it seems like a pretty great evening.

When the movie ends, Mr. Wilson asks her about her week at school, listening enthusiastically to her discussion of projects and books and friends on the playground. She tells him about her computer skills class, how everyone is struggling, but the teacher says she clearly has a natural aptitude. 

“We could get you your own computer, if you’d like,” he offers, and she smiles so wide her face might break.

“Really?”

“Of course. We want to nurture that aptitude of yours.” He smiles as he says it, and she almost bounces in her seat.

“Come sit on my lap,” he tells her, and that stops her cold.

She’s thirteen, not three, and she hasn’t sat on anyone’s lap in a very long time. But then, she doesn’t know. She doesn’t know what normal thirteen year olds do, ones who have real fathers and real homes, and she wants to fit here. She wants Mr. Wilson to be her real father, wants this to be her real home.

So she scuttles across the couch and seats herself on his lap, wishing for something else on the television to take her mind off the way it doesn’t feel right.

“Good, girl,” he tells her, stroking a hand across her back.

The feel of his hand on her back makes her flesh crawl, like ants marching from her neck down her back and arms, like her very skin wants to escape Mr. Wilson's touch. Her whole body feels like exposed nerves, and every brush of his hand is sandpaper.

She hates it. _Hates it_. Hates the way that she feels trapped, like getting away from him isn't an option. Hates the way the whole room seems to turn against her, every shadow becoming darker and menacing, as though the actual house is filling up with the bad feelings crowding her brain. 

He doesn’t object when she reaches for the TV remote and flips around until a rerun of _Full House_ plays, as though it could drown out her thoughts. They sit together for the better part of an episode, Mary Sue tense but almost afraid to move as Mr. Wilson strokes his hand in ever-widening circles around her back. When one episode is over, another starts, and it’s at that point that his hand slides forward and cups her breast over her shirt and bra.

She gasps and tries to pull away, but he pins her on his lap with an arm around her middle.

“Shh,” he quiets her. “Be a good girl.”

She goes still on his lap, jaw clenched so tightly it throbs. As much as she wants to fight back, she doesn't know what he'll do. It turns out, after all, that she doesn't know him  _at all_. 

It's world-shattering, this moment. She had trusted him, only to discover that he's  _this kind of man._ And even worse, he's _always been_ this kind of man. 

All of the girls at St. Agnes know about _this kind of man_ , for all that the sisters spend more time lecturing them about the importance of modesty. She's always been smart, but this is the first time it _fully_ dawns on her that the way the nuns talk about this is wrong. If she tells them about this, they will exonerate Mr. Wilson, and they will demand her repentance, and that knowledge fills her with rage. _  
_

She's always been smart, but this moment, of impotent anger and fear and terror crystallizes so much for her about how the world really works. And who the world really works for.

(For all that, though, she'll always be an idealist. She'll always practice an idealism rooted in the fact that she  _does_ understand the way the world really works. She'll always know, better than most people, what it is to go without food, shelter, and safety. And she'll always believe, more than most people, that it doesn't have to be that way.) 

She feels sick to her stomach, like her body is rejecting the stillness she’s forcing on it, like it will rebel the only way it knows how to.

Mr. Wilson slips his hand under her shirt.

The heat of his hand almost burns, and Mary Sue starts to cry.

“Oh, hush now,” he tells her, as though he’s comforting her over a skinned knee and not the discovery that a man she’s trusted has been evil the whole time. “Be a good girl.”

It’s a threat and she knows it, hears it loud and clear, so she stops her sobs, though the tears keep coming and there’s nothing she can do about it. She stays still as a stone, divorced from her body.

As he gropes under her shirt with his left hand, his right slides under her body and into his pants. It’s over quickly after that, him fumbling with himself until his hand squeezes her breast hard enough to bruise, and he grunts in her ear.

When he finally takes his hands off of her, she slides to the other side of the couch and sits quietly, wiping the tears off of her cheeks.

“It’s bedtime, now,” he tells her, and she nods. As she rises to head upstairs, though, he calls after her. “Mary Sue, this is our secret.”

The words sound dangerous, another threat. 

So she nods quietly, tiptoes upstairs quietly, walks across the second floor landing to the bathroom quietly. But as soon as she’s there, she vomits, retching at the night and the Wilsons and the taste of pineapple pizza, which will forever be the worst taste she can imagine.

She goes to bed quietly, but doesn’t sleep, seeing monsters in every shadow even though Mary Sue doesn’t believe in monsters, the same as she doesn’t believe in God.

For the next day, she stays in her room, ignoring the rumble in her stomach which feels less like hunger and more like sickness. Mrs. Wilson gets home that evening, and Mary Sue greets the woman like she normally would, keeping secrets that make her mouth taste sour and her stomach churn.

When the Wilsons drop Mary Sue back off at St. Agnes two weeks later, there are dark circles under her eyes and most of the weight she’d put on has fallen off.

In her backpack are two tests branded with big, red Fs, and hidden behind them is all the information she could find about the Wilsons — social security numbers, copies of their foster parent certification records, bank accounts. Everything she thinks she might be able to use against them, even if she doesn't know how. (Yet. She doesn't know how, yet.)

(It takes her six months of practicing, of figuring out how things work, but her first act as a hacktivist — when 'Skye' is still just a handle — is to make sure that the Wilsons can't foster any more children. It becomes her raison d'etre at St. Agnes after that — seeking justice for the girls that come back with stories like hers, most of them much worse.)

“I don’t know what happened,” she hears Mr. Wilson tell Sister Mary Margaret. “We thought she was such a good girl.”

“That one’s always been trouble,” Mary Margaret tells them.

Mary Sue realizes, for the first time, that she’d rather be “trouble” _any day_ than a “good girl.”

 

—

 

“So, Agent Skye, you’re in charge. Where to?”

It takes her a moment to come up with the lie. She’s tempted to have him fly to Austin; it feels like it might at least add a few hours to her life expectancy

(But then, it’s also further away from Coulson. Instinctively, she wants to avoid that.)

The diner where she first met Mike Peterson makes perfect sense, though, and she can lie convincingly about why she would have picked it. It’s close enough to Portland that she has hope that Coulson will be able to figure out her location and get there before they’re forced to move.

So she lies, and then she waits, looking out at the sunrise.

(It’s unfair, really, that the world keeps moving, keeps being spectacular and awe-inspiring. But it’s also comforting. If she dies today — though at this point she thinks she might not, if everything lines up just exactly right — everything will keep going. Her team will keep fighting. HYDRA won’t win.)

Every time Ward looks over at her, her skin crawls, and all she can see is Eric Koenig’s face smashed into the ceiling grate. The horrified expression in Thomas Nash’s eyes before Ward shot him in cold blood. The fear and grief etched on Ace’s face when his father had been blown up on that bridge.

The large cut that had lived on Coulson’s right brow for a week after he had been tortured.

Ian Quinn’s hateful face as he shot her in the stomach.

(Ward's face is death and hatred personified, and she wonders how she ever found him handsome.)

Everything in the past hour has come so quickly and Skye has barely had the chance to process it; even now, she feels it more in the sick sensation in her stomach and the crawling gooseflesh on her arms that makes her feel uncomfortable in her own skin.

She remembers the feel of Ward’s mouth on hers, his mouth on hers while he was still _covered in the blood_ of Eric Koenig, and wants to vomit. So of course he picks that moment to look over at her.

“Hey, what’s wrong?”

“You know. Just...everything.” She forces a small smile, which fades too quickly as he reaches across the cockpit and takes her hand. It takes a lot of willpower not to shake it off.

“It'll be okay. Everything is going to be fine.”

He says it as though she's nervous about the height and not the fact that Nazis are trying to take over the world. As though he isn't one of them. As though anything could actually be _fine_ while mass murderers have been released onto the streets and she's in a plane with a Nazi and Coulson is so far away.

Skye nods once, but she can't wipe the sick look off her face.

“Are you okay?”

“Huh? Oh. I guess I’m not used to sitting up here. Maybe I’ll head back and sit somewhere with less...view?”

“I’ll come with you,” he tells her, smiling in a way that she’s sure is supposed to be comforting, but it’s really all about control. He's keeping an eye on her, and she wonders if he thinks he's being sneaky about it (but then, Ward has always liked to keep an eye on her). She nods, and as he walks out of the cockpit beside her, it feels like she’s being led to death.

It’s especially disturbing because it isn’t that Ward is different. It isn’t that she’s faced with someone different than the man she had trusted. Ward seems the same as ever — a little too protective, keeping her a little too close, pushing her a little too hard. She’s always known these things about him (it’s why she hasn't really seen this inevitable sexual relationship that he seems to think should come next for them), but now they’re not personality quirks and they’re not annoyances...they’re part of a man who has helped perpetrate __every bad thing__ that has happened to her and her friends in the last year.

She hadn’t wanted to kiss him earlier. Not really. She was being very truthful when she said that it was too fast, that she really was more in for the talking and less for the kissing. And remembering his words now — his portrayal of himself as __bad__ and her as __good__ — it reads like textbook manipulation. It makes her sick that she fell for it, that she felt sorry for him. Makes her extra sick that she let him kiss her — twice — without knowing that __this__ is who Ward is. Ward is a murderer. Ward is a monster.

She isn't interested in being his embodiment of __good__.

But she keeps quiet. She smiles. And when he places a gentle hand on her lower back, she tries not to shudder in revulsion.

“Hey.” He pulls her up against him near the bar, bringing her in so that her whole body is pressed to his. She reigns in the desire to struggle, but her stomach revolts. The smell of his cologne — a smell she had actually come to enjoy, in the past few months — stings her nose and makes her throat feel raw.

Ward leans down and presses his lips to hers, but she pulls back at the feeling of his tongue trying to snake past her lips. Before he has a chance to comment or feel offended, though, she leans in and lays her mouth to his neck. Stubble presses against her lips, and she swallows back bile.

When he pulls back from her, it’s with the same friendly smile he’s always given her, except that it also looks cruel. And despite every cell in her body that wants to revolt, she reigns it in. She doesn’t vomit and she doesn’t struggle, but she starts to work on another plan, another way to get Ward and Garrett and HYDRA.

Because Skye is __not__ anyone’s good girl, __especially__ Ward’s. And even though she knows how to play along and smile, she  _revels_ in the fact that she is trouble. So every time she forces a smile at Ward, she plans out the Trojan that will help her avenge Thomas Nash and Eric Koenig and Victoria Hand and Mike and Ace and the rest of her team and everyone else Grant Ward has ever hurt.

Skye figured out a long time ago that she'd rather be "trouble" than a "good girl" any day, but she also figured out that being trouble and doing good are often the same.

 

—

 

“Nice night.”

Coulson finally moves his intense eyes off of her, making it possible to stop replaying the feel of his lips against hers, his body under hers, his hands gripping her hips like he _couldn't_ let go. He had been so careful with her — exactly the opposite of Ward, exactly what she needed — even though she could _feel_ how much he wanted more.

She takes another bite of her chocolate, looking up at the Skye with Coulson.

Everything became startlingly clear today. It turns out that all the time she's spent with Coulson this year — special time that made her feel like the most important person in the world — was real. Not some fevered crush she's had, not some game he was playing.

(Not that she thinks Coulson would ever play with her.)

It turns out that she's completely in love with him. She doesn't think she knew this morning that she loves him this much. Like, it wasn't an option and so she didn't think about it. Except, at the same time, she definitely knew she loved him this morning, the same as she loved him yesterday and all the days before that.

(He's _Coulson_.)

He's the safest person she's ever known; he's never made her feel like she needs to apologize for being herself, like she has to police herself to avoid offending him. And he's the most careful person she's ever known — careful with touches and words, quick with apologies and explanations and defenses when they're called for. 

(So different from the way it's always been with Ward; red flag moments from the past several months are suddenly so clear in her memory.)

She wonders if anyone has ever been careful with him before. Careful with his not-so-secretly idealistic, not-so-secretly romantic heart.

(She likes that about him — that even the parts of him that are under the surface are still there on the surface. Coulson is exactly what he seems like, which is something Skye has always valued, but never more than now.)

Skye hears noise behind them as FitzSimmons call out a quiet goodnight and head for their rooms, leaving her and Coulson alone at the pool.

(It's unfair, really, that it can be this nice when they don't have time to enjoy it. When all they can do is race from one crisis to the next.)

“You look deep in thought,” he says to her when they hear the slams of FitzSimmons's doors.

“I guess I am.”

His eyes turn from soft to more concerned, panning over her face carefully.

“But you're okay?”

“Yes,” she answers, smiling. “You?”

“Yes.”

Their eyes meet, and his gaze is so intense it makes her shiver. She's a little worried that if she stays outside with him for much longer, in starlight and fairy lights, she'll confess too much.

Skye stands, then, and walks around the table, where she leans in and drops a soft kiss against Coulson's lips.

“I'm going to go to bed. If you want to come by and talk later...”

She doesn't exactly know what she's offering, but Coulson nods.

His eyes are still locked on her mouth, so she leans in and kisses him again. It's warm, and the feel of him responding to her, of him pushing up to meet her, of his lips moving beneath hers, makes her whole body tingle. He doesn't grab her, though. Doesn't crowd her. Even like this, even when he's showing her how much he wants her, he's so careful.

It makes her heart stutter in her chest, and when she pulls away, they gasp in the same breath of air.

Skye licks her lips and watches Coulson's eyes follow the movement. She grins and lays a kiss on his forehead. 

"Tomorrow, we'll regroup and make a plan. We'll get him." She repeats to him the promise he's already made to her. 

Coulson nods. 

"We will."

"Night," she whispers as she lays another kiss on his forehead.

"Good night." 

And Skye has always reveled in being  _trouble_ , has never needed anyone's approval to know she was doing what was right. But it still feels incredibly good to know how much Coulson values her particular brand of  _trouble_. 

 


End file.
